Gotta love what Jack Conte tries to do. All the creatives out there, feeding the social media beast which has turned into a piece of crap algorithm driven attention seeking advertisement focus killing machine so billionaires can make more billions...creatives don't stand a chance of being truly creative if they need to feed that machine or are creative as a hobby with the day job pays the bills. I like my day job, but I also love creativity and I have been dabbling in sharing my creativeness with the world via the internet for more than two decades now. When Jack started up Patreon several years ago I jumped onboard - it's a way for fans to support artists.
So he's just released a bunch of updates which included the concept of "Quips" - shortform videos on the platform, with the idea that they are just quick and not overproduced. Behind the scenes style. I can get onboard with that! I have been making Jawmunji Talks videos on and off for years, generally I go longer form, but I have also done a few Youtube shorts. Seeing as I'm a recovering perfectionist it's good for me to be less-producey, so I just recorded a Quip and popped it into Jack's machine. Will that machine turn ee-vil? Maybe, but I want to say no. People will game it for sure, but will it intentionally be made ee-vil like the social medias? I want to say no. Will it get traction? Maybe! It will if we feed it! Can Patreon be the vehicle where fans can actually support creatives? I kinda think it already is! I love the "1000 Fans" notion - that you "only" need 1000 fans to pay you $100 a year and that is a decent income. I think of my youngest daughter in her various bands, I know she has followers, and she sells merch at gigs, and it gets devoured. I helped her make 30 high quality CDs for Hyperfest - all sold (note to self - write a blog about that). The lino print cheap t-shirts she makes move easily at a greater profit...heh, I think the CDs are much better value for money, but there you go!
The point being that she is already supported by local fans who show up and buy merch at all her gigs. So that, applied world wide on the internet seems like an obvious step. But the current social media, the streamers, all the internet machinery for it - designed to make the maximum amount of money for shareholders and if the creatives got nothing from it then that would consider that great.
Stepping off my soapbox, I decided to post a Quip. I love to talk about creative stuff that excites me. I love to engage with people who also love to talk about the creative stuff that excites me. I don't need to make a living from being creative, but I wouldn't stop people who want to support me as well! I do have a bunch of mates already on Patreon - in the early days I used to offer stuff so I amassed a number of supporters - but I stopped offering stuff (it was in a very very grey legal area) - and encouraged supporters who were expecting stuff to cancel their subscriptions - but offered cheap tiers for anyone who wanted to keep supporting me. Some did! Thank you supporters - it is great to engage with fans but when someone supports financially it changes things...people making a sacrifice because they believe in something. They don't have to sacrifice but they want to.
Let's switch to tech talking.
I would dearly love to have a dedicated room with cool gear set up to make it super easy for me record a video whenever I am in the creative mood. I do not have that. So just now I spent more time setting up the gear than recording the video. Shame. So here are some notes to Future JAW to help him out:
- OBS Studio: still amazing. Keep using it for this sort of thing.
- Web cameras: I'm running a classic Logitech C922 Pro and a C920. Both are dated - I'm going to buy a more modern replacement for the C920. Important - don't saturate your USB bus with webcam feeds, try to make sure each one is plugged into a different USB bus...currently I have one on the laptop and one on the dock.
- Microphone: my ever-useful Zoom H1D. Turn it on a set it into audio interface mode. Plug it into USB, it's low bandwidth so it will be fine. In OBS Studio go into Settings->Audio and point a Mic/Auxiliary Audio to it.
Remember! Windows->Sound Settings for Input and Output definitively show what is connected. All apps refer to the devices there including OBS! - PeSonus Studio 1824 interface, via Reaper DAW: this is the complicated bit. Guitar instrument cable -> PreSonus interface -> USB to laptop -> Reaper DAW -> OBS + headphones. I use the 1824 in ASIO mode, which is the best way to interface with an interface, and Reaper can apply fx and send them back to the interface, so I plug my headphones into the front of it and get near-zero latency. HOWEVER that isn't shared on the Windows laptop I use UNLESS you turn on Loopback=virtual in the PreSonus Universal Control application. Once you do that, you will see in Sound Settings an input for PreSonus Virtual - which you can then add to OBS as another Mic/Auxiliary Audio.
- OBS Studio again: brings it all together. I've tried different picture-in-picture/split/shifting/etc methods for the webcams, I went for portrait this time, one webcam on top another on the bottom. In Settings->Video I went Base of 1080x1920 (ie portrait HD). Then it is a case of adding the two webcams, cropping and moving them to fit. The Zoom HD1 microphone I initially added a gate filter, but the electric guitar acoustically was getting through the gate when I dug in. If I increased the gate I had to shout to trigger it. So I added a mute/unmute hotkey and remembered to deal with it. Not great.
When in doubt, just talk through your problems with a chatbot - that's what I did. General life tip with chatbots: you have to have some basic knowledge of what you are trying to achieve, you have to half know the answer or they will lead you down a never ending garden trail to nowhere. You have to have a year's worth of built up a knowledge of knowing how to get what you need from a chatbot, accumulated from trial and error...hence I wrote the notes above to help Future JAW when he forgets things.
What I need to do to be a little better for next time (and there is always a next time, I have been doing "behind the scenes" videos for 20 years) - at least one better webcam, and a microphone stand that puts a microphone close to my mouth so I don't have to worry about mute/unmute, so I can just use gating.
Oh and I played Pink Floyd Learning to Fly. I was aiming for a more "Pulse" live feel, so more bassnotes, wasn't quite getting it, still undecided whether I should be hitting it that hard. The G string rings a bit too much, wasn't happy with my playthrough. BUT THAT'S ALRIGHT...if you want perfection use AI slop.
